Curtain call: After dark at the Leaders Sport Business Summit – day one

As a buzzing day at the TimesCenter transitions into a bustling evening in its environs, welcome to your on-the-button review of day one of the Leaders Sport Business Summit New York, fresh to consume as you take a bite out of the Big Apple this evening. And sticking with bitesize, do check out the @LeadersBiz Twitter feed, ripe with content captured throughout the day by our partners at Grabyo.

Catch many of you at the District Social for cocktails and canapés on our friends at OSTMODERN, but for now, here’s a little of what went down in Midtown today:

Seen:

• Commissioner Rob Manfred has enjoyed a solid first three years at the helm of Major League Baseball, ushering in a new CBA, presiding over record growth, and steering the league towards an innovation mindset. He was very clear that he’s never happy following, but accepts that in a couple of key areas, the league is. He’s watching the NBA2K esports league very closely, and has committed to a bold internationalisation plan having learned from the efforts of the NBA and NFL in particular.
• Everyone loves a woulda shoulda coulda story, so it was a delight to hear from Milwaukee Bucks co-owner Marc Lasry about a sliding doors moment he played a part in a few years ago: The Golden State Warriors traded Steph Curry for Andrew Bogut but the Bucks medical team did not pass Curry due to ankle issues and they got Monta Ellis instead. It’s ok though: Curry probably won’t amount to much anyway.
• Some serious engagement on the podcast we put together from day one at Leaders Week, with interviews from the brightest data heads in the sports game at the SAP Sports Forum on Monday. Catch up and subscribe here.
• It’s fair to say that sponsor brands are always in hot demand at sport business summits. They spit strategy up on stage, and then navigate their way through proffered business cards off it. The connections are real, and often valuable, but there’s a knack to doing it right. Dunkin’ Brands CEO Nigel Travis has a nifty way of turning the tables. The Londoner is also chairman of fifth-tier English football club Leyton Orient. To see him switch every pitch into a conversation about sponsoring his own was a masterclass in itself.

Heard:

• Owners, custodians, or anyone linked with a second-tier European football team, listen up: Jamie Dinan is looking to invest.
• A lesson from new ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro for any shrinking violets out there: put yourself out there. How did he get the top job at ESPN? He made it abundantly clear to Disney chief Bob Iger that he wanted it from the get go.
• Turns out quite a lot of the corridor tittle tattle centred on awards speculation. With SBJ’s Sport Business Awards taking place tomorrow evening, and the inaugural Leaders Sports Awards preparing to close nominations on 25^th May, there’s never been a better time to get some recognition.
• Christian Purslow, moderator of today’s opening session with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, putting in some serious homework pumping ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro for tips on his next moderator gig: putting the questions to NBC Sports chief Mark Lazarus tomorrow. If he uses half of what he got, it’s going to be a crackerjack of a session.
• Dallas Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban was quick out of the blocks to declare that the loosening of the sports betting legislation over here in the US had, in one stroke, added millions to major league franchise valuations. Bucks Owner Jamie Dinan was happy to agree with his counterpart from Texas. Rob Manfred, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate to disagree with Cuban’s assessment.
• Rovio Entertainment CEO Kati Levoranta gave a tour de force in presentation through the midst of a battle with Finnish allergies. And a good job she did too. Her case study on Angry Birds’ sleeve sponsorship of Everton FC, in which revenue from game downloads paid back the sponsorship fee within just 100 days, is a model for any rights holder looking to build a business case for brands.
• It’s not all sweetness and light in the sports sponsorship rose garden though. AB-InBev’s VP of Consumer Connections, Joao Chueiri, sounded the warning klaxon for rights holders across the sports marketing space. The beer behemoth’s new partnership policy comprises a uniform base fee for all partners, plus performance incentives after that. Measurement will become even more important, and the marketing teams are looking for meaningfulness rather than exposure. Whether this is a significant shift or a cementing of current thinking has been debated across the sports industry, but one thing was clear: AB-InBev see young people engaging more with ‘experiences’ – food, festivals, and music – than and they’re prepared to follow the crowd.

On the tweets:

@robinjellis: Great nugget from Rob Manfred, @MLB commissioner. Said they invested $150m in streaming platform MLBAM, acquired by Disney for $2.5bn. Said MLB team owners were keen to sell the platform as it “distracted” from regular business @LeadersBiz #leadersweek

@WilliamsBob75: An example of the battle to grow NHL in China. At a a game in Shanghai last year, most fans left after the second period. Why? They thought the game was two halves, not three periods. #leadersweek

@markjburns88: Joao Chueiri of AB InBev says that every deal it has in sports that was up for renewal following the announcement of its new performance-driven sponsorship model, it’s been able to keep #LeadersWeek

@eabjork: Appreciate @dunkindonuts Nigel Travis’s investment in women’s sports. But I’d argue women’s ambition/love of sports is as early as time, not just in last 10yrs. Pathway for girls to grow up & play pro has only been heightened with @WNBA @NWSL & @NWHL in last 10yrs. #leadersweek

@kwmo17: Impressive session and feedback on the state of the business at @espn from James Pitaro. Their evolving strategy seems to continue to yield positive disruption @LeadersBiz #LeadersWeek

@Laurafrofro: Visa has strong, long-standing sponsorships because BOTH Visa AND the partners consistently ask what they need from each other. ~ @ChrisNCurtin, @Visa Chief Brand & Innovation Marketing Officer #LeadersWeek #sportsbiz

The programme for tomorrow – with all the latest timings and information – is available on the Leaders Week app. If you’ve not downloaded it yet, make it right using the password leadersweek, but for now, here’s a brief glimpse of what’s in store on day two:

Wednesday Early AM

• Peter Moore – One year into the job as Liverpool FC CEO, Peter Moore has transferred the passion, dynamism and vision that he brought for many years at EA. Ahead of the Champions League final at the end of the week, he’s transferring a bit of it over here in another unmissable session.

• Mark Lazarus – The NBC Sports Chairman has had quite a year: the Winter Olympics, the Super Bowl, and more disruption than you can shake a stick out.

• Julia Goldin – Lego is one of the names that keeps coming back when we ask you which brand-building stories you’d like to hear about from outside of sport. You spoke, we listened, and the Lego Group CMO will deliver.

Wednesday Late AM

• Meredith Kopit Levein – The New York Times has bucked the global media trend and has built an enormously successful model for monetizing digital content. The hugely respected COO is taking the short trip down the TimesCenter elevator to tell us how they did it.

• Tim Leiweke & Megha Parekh – The former AEG and Maple Leaf chief now has his own sporting empire in Oak View Group, while the Jacksonville Jaguars’ Chief Legal Officer is in the weeds of every investment opportunity evaluated by Shahid Khan. This pair know how to spot value when they see it.

Wednesday PM

• Heritage meets modernity – what two things link the New Zealand All Blacks, FC Barcelona, the Green Bay Packers and Juventus FC? 1) they’re all ‘traditional’ sports brands with a flair for feeding that tradition into modern marketing practices; 2) they’re all here and they’ve agreed to share their secrets.

• Place your bets – Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ll know that a seismic legislative decision has opened the door for widespread legalized sports betting in the US. We’ve gathered the world’s foremost experts in Sportradar, Perform Group, and Genius Sport and given them some tea leaves. How they read them will be worth hearing.

• We’ll also have two behind-closed-doors sessions tomorrow: a Rossetti and Boston Bruins-led masterclass on reimagining what a sports venue could be, and Omnigon’s rights-holder-focused digital afternoon. Do enquire at the helpdesk early on to find out if places have become available. It’s always worth checking.

 You’re probably not in a place where you want to think about more drinks, but there’ll be plenty of food and beverage on offer again tomorrow. Lunch is sponsored by Sportradar, and it’ll be served, as ever, in the main networking hall. Why not take the opportunity to speak to the representatives from our main partners – Aspire Zone, DAZN, Nolan Partners, and SAP – all of them here, and all of them confirmed fans of lunch.